


A Trail of Stardust

by vacant houses (the_lost_robot)



Series: Trailing Stardust [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Chapter 3 AU, Gen, What’s the opposite of accidental baby acquisition, accidental baby dispossession?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-18 15:57:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21630190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_lost_robot/pseuds/vacant%20houses
Summary: The Guild doesn’t ask questions and promises discretion in such matters.Or:The Mandalorian returns for the Asset.It doesn’t go as planned.
Relationships: The Mandalorian & The Child
Series: Trailing Stardust [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559020
Comments: 8
Kudos: 129





	A Trail of Stardust

_What you did, it was wrong._

The new armour weighed heavily on him as he walked towards the Razor Crest in a way beskar wasn’t supposed to. The gleam of it was foreign and unfamiliar as well but the Mandalorian knew that it would not last. The first blaster fight would leave its marks.

The price of what he had paid to receive his new armour, on the other hand, he was less certain of when that would fade.

He boarded his ship, strode up the Razor Crest landing gear and began to prep for takeoff. He had a bounty to catch, the oceanic dunes of Karnac awaited him.

The Mandalorian’s hands flew over the nav controls and paused at the missing handle.

His breath caught.

_How uncharacteristic of one of your reputation._

The Client’s words chided him from memory as he sat frozen, poised in activating the flight sequence. It had been a breach of Guild policy, asking about the Ch-the Asset. He had been paid to do a job and he’d done it. The job itself shouldn’t have mattered. The Mandalorian had dragged all sorts of bounties back to clients without asking questions. Not all had deserved his attention or services - some had been rather harmless in the scheme of things. They had begged him for mercy, offered to pay him off.

None of it had mattered.

Bail jumpers, spice smugglers, Imperials, Rebel insurgents - correction - agents of the New Republic - the Guild has taken them all. Crimes could range from petty to mass murder. Factions were irrelevant, so long as the client paid well.

And this one had, hadn’t he. Even if he was an Imperial - former or otherwise.

Getting the beskar out of Imperial hands and back to the covert would always be worth it.

There would be Foundlings now, getting the first pieces of their armour from the wealth he’d brought back. He could remember the excitement he’d felt, receiving his first piece, his original helmet. It hadn’t been beskar then, not for a child, durasteel was far more suitable.

But it had been bought and paid for by a bounty. He didn’t know who or why, the details were never something he had needed to know.

It had to be worth it.

The Mandalorian exhaled. His vision swam. Unbidden, he heard the soft coo of the Asset-the Child. The mudhorn bearing down on him as he stood, exhausted and wounded, surely these were the last moments of the Mandalorian’s life.

_It did not know it was my enemy._

He wasn’t a Wookiee, bound to a life-debt but the Child had saved his life and he had repaid it by handing into Imperial custody. Who knew what they would do to it, what their purposes were for it. Were they after the Child’s mysterious powers, did they know about that?

It…wasn’t worth it.

He eased off the throttle. The Razor Crest’s purring engines fell silent as the realisation thrummed through him. He knew just how much the galaxy was full of endless cruelty but that did not mean that he had to be part of it.

His feet carried him out of his ship, even as the Mandalorian’s mind rocked with the weight of his decision. Part of him railed against his own actions, as every step took him through the slums, back towards the Client’s residence.

This was against Guild policy, he was burning a bridge he could never go back on.

The beskar felt so much lighter now.

The familiar door looked up ahead. He turned down the side street to scope out the area. The Mandalorian needed to know what he was dealing with before he could launch his assault.

A curve of white caught his attention.

…the bassinet.

They had dumped it in the trash.

No.

Gripped by urgency, the Mandalorian scaled a nearby hovel. Perched atop the roof, he reached for his rifle with steady hands and settled in to scan the area.

The building was bathed in cool colours in the thermal scan. His heart sank as he searched desperately for the warm glow that would indicate a living body. There should have been at least six adult humanoid forms but -

Nothing.

_How uncharacteristic of one of your reputation…_

The Mandalorian dropped to the street below and approached the closest wall, palming a detonator. The next moments, he would only be able to recall in snatches. The explosion that took out the wall he barely heard, he stepped through a cloud of smoke and ash and over the rubble into the base.

There should have been guards, the stormtroopers should have come rushing out to apprehend him as he stormed into the room he had confronted the Client, the last place he had seen the Child.

Nothing.

The room was clear. The desk still sat in the centre, abandoned.

The Mandalorian tore through the rest of the base unchallenged. Every empty hallway filled his veins with an unfamiliar icy panic. They couldn’t be gone. The Child had to be here.

They couldn’t be gone…!

Movement flickered in the corner of his vision, white plasteel. Relief flooded through the Mandalorian as blaster fire flew towards him and he ducked back behind the wall, his own weapon drawn. Stormtroopers.

But as he peered cautiously around the corner, into what appeared to be a storage room, he could only make out two of them. Gritting his teeth, he aimed carefully as he returned fire with his pulse rifle. Stormtrooper aim was notoriously terrible and five years of decay had done nothing to improve these soldiers.

One trooper died in a cloud of orange mist. The Mandalorian swapped to his blaster and landed a deliberating shot on the other’s weapon arm. He swept down the hallway while the trooper reeled with pain. Before the stormtrooper could recover, the Mandalorian’s blaster dug into his neck as he hauled the trooper off the ground and up against the wall.

“Where are they?” The Mandalorian demanded.

The stormtrooper said nothing, only wheezed with pain. The Mandalorian growled with frustration, then yanked his captive by the back of his cuirass and slammed him head first into the nearest wall.

The trooper howled in agony at the rough treatment. “Tell me!” the Mandalorian snarled. “Tell me where they are and you get to keep breathing.”

“They’re gone!” The stormtrooper groaned, trying to curl up on the ground as the Mandalorian prowled in front of him. “Soon as you delivered the package, the boss upped and left with the Asset and Doctor Pershing in a hurry. We-“ the trooper gasped and hissed with pain. “We were left behind for cleanup.” An arm flopped, weakly trying to indicate the equipment that was yet to be packed up.

“Where were they heading?”

“Kabaira,” the trooper spat out, cradling his injured arm. “That’s where, that’s where they were going.”

“The man you work for, what’s his name?”

The stormtrooper almost shrugged before realising what a painful idea that would be. “Never gave us one. Orders from command were to do as he said.”

The Mandalorian drew back, weighing his next action. Kabaira…that had been Imperial territory back in the day but it was hard to know what was and wasn’t these days. It could be a Imperial stronghold now or it could have broken free and was trying out independence or angling for membership with the New Republic. The Client could either be going to ground or maybe it was just a stop over before he vanished into the ether.

The Client had left in a hurry. Was it because he’d asked after the Child, that the Client had suspected he might renege on the deal and it had spooked him into abandoning this location?

Kabaira was almost definitely a stopover point.

Cursing to himself, the Mandalorian left the stormtrooper huddled on the floor. Almost in a dream, he drifted back through the base. He needed to get back to the Razor Crest and into hyperspace as soon as possible.

_How uncharacteristic…_

The Mandalorian blinked and found himself back in that room. Something twinged painfully in his chest. The Mandalorian could almost see the Child in its bassinet just before it floated out of view behind a door and beyond his reach.

The beskar felt impossibly heavy.

He needed to leave, go as quickly as possible. The longer he dawdled here, the colder the trail got.

The Mandalorian didn’t know what prompted him to open the bottom drawer of the desk. But there, carelessly discarded, he found a fob.

It wasn’t active, not with the bounty fulfilled. It was Guild policy to turn them in, so the Mandalorian no longer had one in his possession.

The Mandalorian curled his hand around it. Already, the future seemed a little brighter. He’d head to the Client’s last know location and if the Client wasn’t there, then he’d find a slicer and get the fob reactivated.

He’d right his mistake.

He could only hope he wasn’t too late.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, the first time I watched episode 3, I was like, gosh I am going to be in pain if the Imperials have fucked off with the baby and now the Mandalorian has to track them down to get his frog child back.
> 
> If you enjoyed this, please let me know!


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